The breeding of food animals for certain qualities desired by breeders, farmers and consumers can have the unintentional side effect of selecting for less desirable characteristics. For example, by breeding for animals that produce large amounts of meat quickly, breeders have also selected for animals that may have meat qualities that consumers find less than desirable. Both turkey and pork meat can have what is termed pale, soft and exudative (PSE) meat. PSE meat is characterized by an abnormally light color, a flaccid consistency and poor water holding capacity. These characteristics make the meat hard to process in packing facilities and consumers find meat with these characteristics less than desirable. It is estimated that the problem of PSE meat costs the poultry industry alone millions of dollars a year.
Presently, the poultry industry deals with the problem of PSE turkey meat in ineffective ways. For example, some people in the field have suggested alternative meat processing or transportation schemes to improve the qualities of PSE turkey meat (Alvarado, C. Z., A. R. Sams, “The Role of Carcass Chilling Rate in the Development of Pale, Exudative Turkey Pectoralis” Poultry Science 81:1365-1370, 2002; Owens, C. M. and A. R. Sams, “The Influence of Transportation on Turkey Meat Quality” Poultry Science 79:1204-1207, 2000). These suggestions have had only marginal impact on relieving the problem. At least one method of testing for turkeys prone to developing PSE meat has been proposed (Wheeler, et al., “A Halothane Test to Detect Turkeys Prone to Developing Pale, Soft and Exudative Meat” Poultry Science 78:1634-1638, 1999). However, the test did not identify PSE turkeys consistently. Others have proposed treating PSE meat after slaughter to make it more appealing to the consumer (U.S. Pat. No. 5,928,689 to Mikowski, et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 6,020,012 to Kauffman, et al.) However, even when these methods are successful, the quality of the treated PSE meat is still substandard as compared to non-PSE meat.
What is needed is an effective method by which turkeys that produce a better quality of meat can be identified and selected before farmers undergo the expense of raising the turkeys to maturity or using them used for breeding purposes.